Excerpts for Airborn

Airborn

By Kenneth Oppel

Eos

ISBN: 0-06-053180-0

Chapter One

Ship's Eyes

Sailing toward dawn, and I was perched atop the crow's nest, being the
ship's eyes. We were two nights out of Sydney, and there'd been no weather
to speak of so far. I was keeping watch on a dark stack of nimbus clouds
off to the northwest, but we were leaving it far behind, and it looked to
be smooth going all the way back to Lionsgate City. Like riding a cloud.

The sky pulsed with stars. Some people say it makes them lonesome when
they stare up at the night sky. I can't imagine why. There's no shortage
of company. By now there's not a constellation I can't name. Orion. Lupus.
Serpens. Hercules. Draco. My father taught me all their stories. So when I
look up I see a galaxy of adventures and heroes and villains, all jostling
together and trying to outdo one another, and I sometimes want to tell
them to hush up and not distract me with their chatter. I've glimpsed all
the stars ever discovered by astronomers, and plenty that haven't been.
There're the planets to look at too, depending on the time of year. Venus.
Mercury. Mars. And don't forget Old Man Moon. I know every crease and
pockmark on that face of his.

My watch was almost at an end, and I was looking forward to climbing into
my bunk, sliding under warm blankets and into a deep sleep. Even though it
was only September and we were crossing the equator, it was still cool at
night up in the crow's nest, parting the winds at seventy-five miles an
hour. I was grateful for my fleece-lined coat.

Spyglass to my face, I slowly swept the heavens. Here at the Aurora's
summit, shielded by a glass observation dome, I had a three-sixty view of
the sky around and above the ship. The lookout's job was to watch for
weather changes and for other ships. Over the Pacificus, you didn't see
much traffic, though earlier I'd caught the distant flicker of a
freighter, ploughing the waves toward the Orient. But boats were no
concern of ours. We sailed eight hundred feet above them.

The smell of fresh-baked bread wafted up to me. Far below, in the ship's
kitchens, they were taking out the first loaves and rolls and cinnamon
buns and croissants and Danishes. I inhaled deeply. A better smell than
this I couldn't imagine, and my stomach gave a hungry twist. In a few
minutes, Mr. Riddihoff would be climbing the ladder to take the watch, and
I could swing past the kitchen and see if the ship's baker was willing to
part with a bun or two. He almost always was.

A shooting star slit the sky. That made one hundred and six I'd seen this
season; I'd been keeping track. Baz and I had a little contest going, and
I was in the lead by twelve stars.

Then I saw it.

Or didn't see it. Because at first all I noticed was a blackness where
stars should have been. I raised my spyglass again and, with the help of
the moon, caught a glimpse.

It was a hot air balloon, hanging there in the night sky.

Its running lights weren't on, which was odd. The balloon was higher than
us by about a hundred feet, drifting off our starboard bow. The burner
came on suddenly, jetting blue flame to heat the air in the balloon's
envelope for a few seconds. But I couldn't see anyone at the controls.
They must have been set on a clockwork timer. Nobody was moving around in
the gondola. It was deep and wide, big enough for a kind of sleeping cabin
on one side, and plenty of storage underneath. I couldn't ever recall
seeing a balloon this far out. I lifted the speaking tube to my mouth.

"Crow's nest reporting."

I waited a moment as my voice hurtled down through the tube, one hundred
fifty feet to the control car suspended from the Aurora's belly.

"Go ahead, Mr. Cruse."

It was Captain Walken on watch tonight, and I was glad, for I much
preferred him to the other officers. Some of them just called me "Cruse"
or "boy," figuring I wasn't worth a "mister" on account of my age. But
never the captain. To him I was always Mr. Cruse, and it got so that I'd
almost started to think of myself as a mister. Whenever I was back in
Lionsgate City on shore leave and my mother or sisters called me Matt, my
own name sounded strange to me at first.

"Hot air balloon at one o'clock, maybe a half mile off, one hundred feet
up."

"Thank you, Mr. Cruse." There was a pause, and I knew the captain would be
looking out the enormous wraparound windows of the control car. Because it
was set well back from the bow, its view of anything high overhead was
limited. That's why there was always a watch posted in the forward crow's
nest. The Aurora needed a set of eyes up top.

"Yes, I see it now. Well spotted, Mr. Cruse. Can you make out its
markings? We'll train the light on it."

Mounted at the front of the control car was a powerful spotlight. Its beam
cut a blazing swath through the night and struck the balloon. It was in a
sorry state, withered and puckered. It was leaking, or maybe the burner
wasn't working properly.

"The Endurance," I read into the speaking tube.

She looked like she'd endured a bit too much. Maybe a storm had punctured
her envelope or bashed her about some.

And still no sign of the pilot in the gondola.

Along the length of the speaking tube I heard tinny murmurings from the
control car as the captain conferred with the bridge officers.

"It's not on the flight plan," I heard Mr. Torbay, the navigator, say.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Airborn
by Kenneth Oppel Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.